Career Paths to Becoming a Product Manager

Based on the mission and vision, the product manager identifies user issues, puts them into the form of a product, and concretizes the plan. The product manager is also responsible for promoting development, releasing the product, and verifying its effectiveness, while involving the designers and development team. A wide range of knowledge and experience are required to take on this role.

Due to the nature of this role, there appears to be an increasing number of people aspiring to become product managers. However, most of the people who call themselves product managers today did not become product managers by following a pre-defined path.

Therefore, the know-how about product managers is gradually being developed, but there is nothing organized about how to become a product manager. At the same time, the gateway to becoming a product manager with no experience is currently quite limited. In light of this situation, this article will attempt to categorize the career path to product manager based on the backgrounds of the product managers I have worked with and the backgrounds of those who became product managers.

Overview

There are numerous paths to becoming a product manager, including internal transfers, career changes, challenges from academic backgrounds, and various other routes. In this section, we will organize and detail the transition to becoming a product manager into three main categories: internal transfers, career changes from no experience, and challenges from academia.

1. Transitioning through Internal Transfers

Transferring from an Engineer

First, software engineers (hereafter referred to as "engineers") are the type of people who work most closely with product managers. Looking at engineers from the product manager's perspective, there are two types of engineers: technology-driven and user-driven.

The former are those who are very particular about what kind of technology is used to realize their plans, while the latter are those who are conscious of not just taking requirements for granted, but instead listen deeply to and understand the user's sensibilities before creating as concisely as possible. The latter are strongly interested not only in how to create, but also why and what to create, and I think this interest often intensifies and ultimately leads them to knock on the door to become product managers.

Also, in the case of products that make use of artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), it is not always possible to take on the role of product manager without experience as an AI/ML engineer. Other areas such as infrastructure systems and API PF, such as login, billing, and data infrastructure, are areas where in-house engineers are often the users, and engineering background is strongly required.

Moving from Designer

UI/UX is a very powerful means of communication in the planning process. For this reason, product managers often collaborate with designers in the planning stage.

Especially for products where UI/UX can make or break the planning, there are many transfers from designers. For example, a B2C product that focuses on UGC requires more complex user actions than EC or media, but if many users do not take those actions, the product will not be successful. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that the success or failure of a product depends on its UI/UX.

In addition, for a long time, there have been few SaaS-centered B2B products that have focused on UI/UX. Therefore, the evolution of UI/UX has become an easy situation to create differentiation. We are gradually beginning to see and hear of cases of startups that have realized this situation and are promoting product development with a strong focus on UI/UX.

Moving from Analytics

Analytics is required to understand the business progress of the entire product and its revenue structure, as well as to analyze user trends in detail. They will collaborate with product managers on preliminary research for planning and post-release effectiveness verification.

After a year of analysis, you will sometimes be more familiar with the overall picture of the product and user trends than the product manager. In some cases, instead of getting work from the product manager, you may be able to share your findings with the product manager and create a roadmap or a major policy strike. It's a bit of a kick in the teeth to already have a deep understanding of a situation and not be able to change it on your own initiative, so you find yourself thinking about a plan and then turning to the product manager as a follow-up.

I myself have been in charge of analytics and data mining twice in the past, and then both times I turned to product manager. It is one of the paths I recommend because it is challenging based on a fairly high level of motivation and overall experience.

Moving from the business side

In B2B, it is rare that users naturally pick up and start using a product even after it is released. Therefore, the business side, including marketing, sales, and customer success, will share the responsibility of delivering the product to users.

During this process, we gain a deep understanding of the user's business, see the causes of lost orders and bottlenecks when implementing the product, understand user needs, and come up with ideas for improvements and additional features. Some people on the business side will not only communicate these ideas to the product manager, but will also have the desire to develop their own plans and deliver them to the users. These people turn to product managers armed with domain and user understanding.

Even in B2C, products that can be easily grown through marketing, such as media, and those with complex specifications, such as sign-up and billing, are areas where it is easy to move from marketing and customer support, respectively.

2. Entering Without Prior Experience

New graduate product manager in a mega-venture

In mega-venture companies with more than 30 product managers, there are cases where training is well organized and a foundation is in place for new graduates to take on the challenge of becoming product managers without experience. In such cases, even new graduates may be assigned to a product manager position if their potential is recognized during the interview process or during an internship after a job offer. If you can provide a learning environment for the honest and down-to-earth, you can become anything, and product managers are no exception to this rule.

However, what is important to note about new graduate product managers is that they have no existing background, so they have a strong tendency to get lost as to what type of product manager they are. I think it is a good idea to find a role model as early as possible, and to work together to verbalize and practice what type of product manager you want to be.

Potential Driven Product Managers

In addition to new graduate product managers, there are cases where product managers are accepted on the basis of potential alone, even though they have no experience at all. Since there is no premium for new graduates, the door is narrower, and a higher level of groundwork, honesty, and commitment is required.

To break it down a bit, a product manager is responsible for setting the user problem to be solved, verbalizing the needs, and then concretizing the solution. And a single product manager cannot create a product alone. Therefore, it is necessary to communicate highly abstract themes to designers, engineers, and other team members in an easy-to-understand manner. These are the most basic tasks of a product manager, but they require advanced thinking skills and straightforward responses. These requirements are not limited to product managers, but may be common to those who take on challenges in other industries or in other sectors.

If you join a startup in its early stages, you will be a product manager before you know it

When you join a startup in its early stages, you will be assigned certain roles, but rather than a clear division of duties, you will be picking up each other's problems and solving them. During this phase, if you produce some kind of results, work will start to flow in. And, in more than a few cases, they find themselves in the role of product manager.

I think this path is tapering off a bit. Product managers themselves are becoming more and more popular, and the hiring of the first product manager in a startup is recognized as one of the topical issues. Given this background, I would say that the tendency is to hire a product manager before you realize it.

suddenly challenged to become a product manager from mid-career

As explained as a challenge due to internal transfers, there are a certain number of cases where people suddenly move from the engineering, designer, analytics, or business side to become product managers.

In the areas where you can use your experience in each function, it is possible to change jobs rather than transferring. However, of course, the hurdles are naturally higher when changing to a different position as a product manager at another company, compared to a transfer where you can challenge yourself based on internal evaluations.

Challenging the CEO

The role of a product manager is to find and solve user problems. Although qualitatively different as a means rather than a mere job title, you can start a business and achieve the same thing within the framework of a company. In other words, if you have the passion and the challenges you want to solve, you can start your own company and take on the role of a product manager without having to settle for a product manager position.

Product managers are often referred to as mini-CEOs, and this approach is naturally a much harder road to take, since you will be responsible for the CEO position in both name and reality. However, you can take on the role of product manager without being dependent on the company or position.

3. Challenges from academia

As an extra, it seems that overseas, there are established cases of people who majored in computer science as an undergraduate, experienced working, and then went on to an MBA to become a product manager. For example, Google is famous for accepting MBA graduates as Associate Product Managers and offering a one-year training program.

In addition, New York University and Carnegie Mellon University now offer MBA courses in product management as part of their Diploma programs. Although we have not yet communicated with graduates and have not been able to grasp the actual situation, this may be a useful pathway.

Courses on product management in Japan are still quite limited, but there are a wide variety of product management courses available overseas. For example, one of the lighter ones is the product management course offered by General Assembly. Ivy league's MBA also offers an online course on product management.

I have taken several of these courses, and I think they are quite a useful way to learn product management in a systematic way. I think that having an MBA professor who has served as an advisor to GAFAM, etc. teach the courses will provide not only knowledge, but also an opportunity to refresh your mind.

Key Points

There are countless paths to becoming a product manager. If you want to take the easy route, I think the best way is to join a company that already has a good track record of transfers to product manager, join as a product side, engineer or designer, build up a solid track record, and then request a transfer. Of course, it is essential to perform well in your current position if you want to transfer, rather than raising your hand immediately after joining the company.

Despite the fact that there is a shortage of product management personnel, the number of people who can become a product manager has not yet been established, so the number of openings is limited. Despite this, there are still many people who want to become product managers. In other words, simply saying that you want to be a product manager does not differentiate you from other candidates. As a first step, you need to build a track record in your current position and communicate that you are qualified and committed to being a product manager.

In addition, as summarized in the challenge from no experience, if you are confident in your potential due to your domain and groundwork, it is a good idea to successively check if there are any product manager positions open at companies where you can easily utilize those strengths.

In particular, those with experience in both domain and product management are only found at competing companies. Therefore, the door for inexperienced people is often relatively wide, so I recommend that you take on the challenge without hesitation. Furthermore, if you already have a challenge and passion to solve, or if you are confident anyway, it may be interesting to challenge the path to become a product manager overseas from a CEO or MBA out of the blue.

Conclusion

The concept of product management is becoming more and more popular, and the number of people who want to become product managers continues to increase. However, the number of doors is still quite limited.

However, this doesn't mean becoming a product manager is impossible. There are countless clues to becoming a product manager, such as development and design knowledge, user understanding, domain knowledge, and potential. In addition to moving to a new position, you can also take on the challenge of starting with no experience. When considering a move to product manager, we would be more than happy to look at each of the aforementioned paths and help you build your career.